Concentration camps shared an intimate history with different forms of colonialism and genocide before being transformed into the death camps of Nazi Germany. The Encyclopædia Britannica defines a concentration camp as “an internment centre for political prisoners and members of national or minority groups who are confined for reasons of state security, exploitation, or punishment, usually by executive decree or military order. Persons are placed in such camps often on the basis of identification with a particular ethnic or political group rather than as individuals and without benefit either of indictment or fair trial.” Modern concentration camps were initially constructed in the 1830s in the southeastern United States as part of the campaign for “Indian removal” to detain 22,000 Cherokee (Gunter’s Landing, Ross’s Landing, and Fort Cass), and later during the Dakota War of 1862 a camp was constructed on Pike Island near Fort Snelling, Minnesota, in which 1,700 Dakota were interned. So-called contraband camps, which existed during and immediately after the Civil War, were designed as temporary domiciles for “freed” slaves throughout the U.S. South. The conditions in these precarious holding zones at the crossroads of enslavement and freedom were defined by starvation and the outbreak of diseases, which lead to the death of thousands of black subjects. In 1895 imperial Spain utilized concentration camps in Cuba to stop local uprisings, and the British first used the English-language term in 1900 to name similar efforts during the Boer War in South Africa. During the Philippine-American War (1901), the United States constructed an encampment in Batangas province.
Posted on: Sun, 11 Jan 2015 04:51:25 +0000
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